Cave In (Plus) Sierra November
by altschmerz
Summary: Exfil team Sierra November is sent on a call to retrieve DXS Agents MacGyver and Dalton from an unstable cave system. When Thomas King gets to the agents he's been sent to retrieve, what he finds is grim. With Jack trapped and unresponsive, Mac refusing to leave, and the entire system close to coming down around them, getting everyone out alive is going to be... complicated. (gen)


_here it is, all, back by popular request (and BOY am i shocked and delighted by this), exfil team sierra november and in particular, our guy thomas king! i'm planning to do a couple more oneshots with these folks, so keep an eye out for that if you're interested. feel free to chat or prompt me over on tumblr at altschmerzes!_

 _my plan is to post one oneshot a month all of 2019. this is january's. 'but gav' you may say, 'it's feburary'. sure is! but shit happens and this baby was much longer than i meant it to be. the majority of the work was done in january, so i'm gonna call it good._

 _(warnings: there's gunshots, injuries, and general peril to be found here. also some language.)_

 _also - thanks to Haven126 for the comment on 'sierra november' that inspired a scene in where, posing the question why was thomas recruited in the first place? i hope this is a satisfying answer!_

* * *

The moment they get the call, Thomas knows something bad has happened to Mac. Well, know might be phrasing it a bit strongly. It's more like he has an educated assumption based on a prior experiences. Since joining DXS exfil team Sierra November well over a year ago, Thomas has seen a lot of agents in pretty bad condition when he and the three other members of his team showed up to collect them. A not-insignificant number of those unfortunate, bloodied occasions have involved Agent MacGyver and his partner, always somehow with Mac on the receiving end of the worst of the damage.

To make matters worse, on top of the already fair assumption that the end of Mac and Jack's mission would involve some pretty serious first-aid, there's a generalized bad feeling Meredith had apparently woken up with that morning hanging over the exfil run as well.

Thomas starts that morning sitting on a chair at the counter in the kitchenette situated across the hall from the on-call rooms where exfil teams on duty slept while waiting for the go-signal during particularly time sensitive missions. He's staring pensively at the coffee pot as it slowly fills, wondering when it started working at such a glacial pace, what could be wrong with the internal wiring that it's taking fifteen minutes to brew, when a familiar set of footsteps sounds down the hall, and Meredith Casey walks in. The second-youngest member of Sierra November hops up on the counter next to him, propelling herself up using the side of the stool next to Thomas' to perch on the countertop.

"Today is bad news," she announces. Thomas looks over at her, brows arched high in a silent question, which she answers dismissively, "Don't ask me how, I just know it's gonna be. I've got a _feeling_ , you know?"

He doesn't 'know', and he tells her as much, to which his teammate scoffs and shakes her head. It's a calm morning, all in all, which to be fair, does leave Thomas with a slightly unsettled feeling. It's been quiet for too long - they're due to be called out any moment now, up next in the rotation. For now, though, it's just Thomas and Meredith and the kitchenette. Pale, early light filters in through the window high in the wall over the sink. The coffee maker continues to bubble and hiss its way slowly through its job.

The call comes in twenty minutes after Meredith did, heralded by Thomas' team lead poking her head around into the room with a brisk, "Morning. It's go time, guys, got a hot call on MacGyver and Dalton, leaving in ten."

"Nikki Carpenter not on this one?" Meredith asks, speaking of the computer tech that had so recently joined their favorite duo's team. She does an admirable job, Thomas notes, of disguising her dislike of the new girl - another one of her inexplicable, explanation-less 'bad feelings'.

"No, there was a firewall issue that they needed basically all computer hands on deck for. Call's just on Mac and Jack."

Lucia's head disappears, and Thomas drops his own onto his forearms. He hasn't even finished his coffee yet. By the time he looks back up, Meredith has his mug in her hand, and is transferring it to a travel thermos. She hops off the counter and waves it at him then at the door, indicating they should get a move on.

"You _do_ love me," he mutters, still feeling that groggy, pre-coffee tired of a sluggish morning about to get exponentially faster paced. Thomas takes the thermos from her as he passes her on the way to the door, hearing her voice call after him as she fixes her own coffee.

"And don't you forget it."

Thomas spends the walk from the kitchenette to the plane outside ready for them thinking about what's going to be waiting when they arrive at the pickup point. When exfil is sent to retrieve an agent or agent team, there are a number of circumstances they can be walking into. The system of labeling is pretty simplistic - a cold call means no action and low worries, just in, grab the waiting agents, out. Flat calls mean a potentially dicey situation, maybe a moderate injury with the possibility of taking a turn for the worse at any moment. And then there are hot calls, like the one they're being sent on now. Hot calls are the most dangerous.

A hot call means tac gear and all senses on high alert. A hot call means being ready for the plan to change on a dime, ready to re-route in air, ready to perform emergency field medicine on a half-dead agent with only a vague hope their frantic partner will recognize who you are and let you anywhere near them. A hot call means something very bad has happened, statistically speaking probably to Mac, and Thomas doesn't like that thought at all.

He finishes his coffee on the plane, listening to Sierra November second in command, Vincent, go over the pick-up site with Meredith, with Lucia in the pilot's seat up front. Thomas prepares for arrival silently, and tries to ignore the slight anxiety rattling at the edges of his focus.

 _Hot call_ , he hears in Lucia's voice, while Vincent details the forested wilderness they're headed towards. Each time Sierra November is tasked with being the ones to swoop into the aftermath of the latest act of heroism that's left countless lives saved and a violent toll taken on Mac's body, Thomas finds it just a little bit harder. He hopes that, by the time he's put in as many years running this type of mission as Lucia and Vincent has, even as many as Meredith has, he'll have learned to live with it a little easier.

In the meantime though, Thomas takes a deep breath and pushes past extractions gone wrong out of his mind, purposefully puts deep in a box the memory of trying to hold Mac's blood in his body with his own hands, and focuses on equipping for the task ahead. There's a vest across Thomas' lap that looks like the tac vest Jack is often found in when they pick the pair up. It's got his last name stitched over the left breast pocket, _KING_ labeling this distinct as his. The assortment of pockets and hooks are personalized to each exfil agent, and it wouldn't do for Thomas to end up with Meredith's vest - not only would it likely not fit him, it would have the wrong equipment.

The process of verifying his gear is one Thomas finds soothing, and has for years, long before he joined Sierra November. The flashlights, both the high-intensity wide-beam one and the smaller garden variety have functioning batteries, as does his long range walkie-talkie. A multitool Mac would be proud of goes next, slotted into a pouch above a collection of carabiners, and a coil of thin but strong rope is double checked for flaws and wound tightly to be fastened to the opposite side of the vest. It's a bulky collection of items to wear on one's person, but it leaves Thomas' hands free to go for his gun if necessary, and you never know what you're going to need until you don't have it. He learned that one the hard way.

Once he's finished checking his equipment, Thomas signs the small slip stored in a pocket on the inside near the collar, indicating he's verified his vest and confirmed it's all as it should be. He puts the whole thing on and fastens the buckles tightly, and suddenly finds he is left with nothing to occupy his hands. He twists his fingers through the loops at the front of his gear vest and grips the fabric, staring out the window at the landscape below the helicopter. It's one mile after the other of grim forest and the occasional patch of craggy meadow that seems too dingy and colorless to fit a word that conjures images of butterflies and sunshine through patches of daisies. What's down there is nowhere anyone would want to picnic. The sky above them is slate grey with cloud cover, and it's muted the greens and browns of the scenery beneath them until it gives the whole place a washed out feel. Thomas doesn't like it.

Then again, he doesn't like anything about how this feels. A glance across the helicopter puts him in eye contact with Meredith. Evidently not wanting to bother Lucia and Vincent by speaking over the headsets, Meredith mouths 'bad news' at him. Rather than at all acknowledge that she may have had a point, Thomas rolls his eyes and looks back outside.

The tree branches buffet about as the chopper lowers into one of the larger clearings, four kliks from the last known location of Mac and Jack. They can't get any closer without risking the arms smugglers the field agents had gone to take down picking them off when they landed. It's unclear if they're still in the area, but it's better to err on the side of caution. Thomas and the rest of Sierra November don't really know much about what happened at the end of that mission. Their intel extends to that something went wrong, Mac and Jack ended up on the wrong end of a bad situation, and the last transmission had been from Jack just before they went out of range of communications, letting command know they were going down into the cave system riddling the hilly countryside.

The landing is uneventful. The trek through the forest is uneventful. Even the initial descent into one of the main openings of the cave system is uneventful. By silent agreement, his teammates allow Thomas to pass them and take the lead once actually inside. When he reaches Vincent, a hand catches him by the elbow, stopping him in his path. The beam of Thomas' smaller Maglite flashlight dances over his chest, catching sight of STONEstitched on his vest in white thread, before landing on his face. Vincent's arched brows ask a wordless question, and Thomas nods once, shortly, in answer. He knows what he's doing. This is why he was hired. Vincent releases his arm and motions him forward, allowing him to assume the lead.

As they make their slow and careful way through the stone halls between moderately sized cave rooms, Thomas can hear the rock around them occasionally shifting. Long ago this must have been somebody's attempt at creating a mine, or a bootlegger's moonshine hideout, given the sporadic wood support beams and crude edges indicating human interference with the natural formations of the landscape. It was shoddily done work quickly abandoned, and not a second has gone by that Thomas hasn't been acutely aware of just how close the whole thing is to coming down on top of them. Even the largest and sturdiest of caves bear some risk, and the sounds coming from the empty space in front of them don't bode well.

It's barely been ten minutes of careful progress, keeping a sharp eye out for any indication of the agents they've been sent to retrieve, when it happens. The quiet shifting in the rock around them has been infrequent and distant so far, but there's something different about the sound Thomas is hearing now. It's louder, and more widespread.

"Stop," he says quietly, voice carrying through the enclosed space easily. His team stops behind him.

"What is it, Thomas?" Lucia's voice sounds from behind him, clear despite her lowered pitch. He holds up a hand, outlined by the beam of his flashlight, indicating they should keep quiet. As he does, the sounds from the rock grow louder, and with a jolt of adrenaline, cold down his spine, Thomas knows what's about to happen.

"Get to the walls, _now_ ," he snaps, lurching forward and plastering himself to the side of the tunnel-hall.

Thomas can feel the shaking in the rock under his hand and he closes his eyes, throwing his free arm over his head in the hopes of preventing a brain injury should the whole thing come down around them. When the shaking and the sounds of stone-on-stone stop, Thomas cautiously opens his eyes, peering through a haze of dust making it hard to breathe, looking for signs of the rest of his team. He doesn't find any. There's only a wall of stone rubble almost completely occluding the way back towards where the others had been.

For a few seconds, a klaxon scream of panic is all that exists in Thomas' mind. He gives himself those seconds, allows every terrible what-if to bolt through his brain, imagined scenarios of crushed skulls and broken necks dominating his thoughts, and then it all shuts off. His few seconds are over, and it's time to stop being scared. Thomas shakes his head and clears his throat, calling out into the dark.

"Lucia! Vincent! Meredith!" The purpose for keeping quiet, thus avoiding getting found out if the gun runners had followed Mac and Jack into the tunnels, is trumped by the immediate need to assess the damage done to his team. They could have a whole new set of immediate problems to deal with. He flicks the Maglite over the wall, looking for openings. The beam catches on a gap between the rockslide and the ceiling and Thomas edges towards it, risking taking a step onto one of the lower rocks to get a better view.

"Tommy?" Meredith's voice sounds as he sweeps his flashlight through the gap, looking for her. Her voice is steady and calm but the nickname betrays her worry. "Tommy, you good?"

"Yeah, no damage here," he says, mentally ticking off one of three empty boxes. "How're Vince and Lucia?"

"We're fine," Vincent answers. A moment later, his face comes into view, having presumably found something of his own to step up onto. "We need to start clearing this so we can get you over here and circle around to the other entrance."

"I'm going forward." The words are out of Thomas' mouth before he's realized he's decided to say them, but once they're there, he knows he means it. There's no way, now that he knows his team is safe and unharmed, he can waste valuable time when he's almost a hundred percent certain 'safe and unharmed' is the furthest from accurate description of Mac and Jack's current condition. "Digging through this is going to take time we don't have, and if MacGyver and Dalton are in trouble they can't wait that long."

There's a shuffle, and Vincent's head drops out of view. Lucia appears moments later, though he can't see much more than her eyes. His team lead is looking at him with an evaluating calculation, not immediately rejecting his proposal out of hand nor granting it instant approval.

"On your own?" she asks, straight to the point.

"I've got a gun, you certified me yourself in hand-to-hand, and I'm probably more qualified than almost anyone in DXS when it comes to this sort of thing." It sounds like a brag, and Thomas supposes it is. But it proves his point, as after a few more seconds of looking at him, Lucia's head dips in a nod.

"Check in when you get a signal on the walkie. We'll circle around and meet you at the next entrance to the surface. You've got your map. Be _careful_ ," she orders, and Thomas nods back.

"Yes ma'am."

With that, Lucia's face disappears, and that's the end of it, until Meredith's voice calls an afterthought at him through the wall of rock.

"Don't do anything stupid, Tom."

Laughing under his breath, Thomas says back, "I'll try." And then they're gone, and he's on his own. Until, that is, he isn't anymore.

In a cave system like this, sound carries easily. It had been less of a concern when he'd been with the rest of Sierra November, their collective firepower and combat training backing each other up, but alone is a different story. He's traded his flashlight for infrared goggles, the ones Meredith say make them look like Star Trek extras, and walks softly, footsteps mostly masked as part of the natural shifting of the caves. About ten feet from the next bend is where he begins to hear it - someone else is there.

Thomas freezes, listening to the faint mumbling, too quiet for him to make out the words, accompanied by an odd tapping, like rock against rock but sharper somehow. Metal maybe. He moves forward slowly, until he gets right to the corner, then peers cautiously around it, hand on the gun strapped to his thigh. There's an odd sort of room off to the side, more like a hallway, cut off by another cave-in like the one that had sent the rest of Sierra November back the way they came.

A figure painted green in infrared is leaning with his back against the solid wall beside the wall of rocks, hand at his side moving rapidly in a strange pattern of taps. Thomas would know that shaggy haircut anywhere - he's found Mac and Jack. Except, he notes, frowning and sweeping his head side to side, scoping the area, Jack is nowhere to be seen. Just Mac then, and he doesn't seem to be badly hurt, at least not as far as Thomas can see. He looks to be having a pretty bad time though, chest heaving visibly along with the muttering and the tapping. Something's gone wrong. Something's gone really, _really_ wrong.

Thomas steps out around the corner, flipping the goggles up off his eyes and clicking on his smaller flashlight.

"Mac," he says, and a few things happen at once. The muttering and tapping stop, whatever he'd been tapping with clatters to the ground, and hands impact Thomas' chest, slamming him back into the opposite wall - luckily a stable one. Thomas' flashlight goes flying, skidding over near the rock pile and whirling around, beam flashing in rapid circles until it comes to a halt. His voice raises a little in volume, saying again, "Mac!"

The young field agent seems ready to continue the struggle, and Thomas' instincts kick in. He grabs Mac by the wrists, silently apologizing, and flips their positions, putting Mac's back against the wall and pinning him there as carefully as he can. The dropped flashlight's beam casts a sick, artificial glow up just enough to dimly light Mac's features, which are panicked and distant. There's a small cut on his temple, blood smeared across it and the back of his hand like he'd wiped at it absentmindedly, and an angry looking red mark on his jaw that's sure to turn into a bruise any moment. The visible damage is superficial, and Thomas wonders if he might be concussed, because he doesn't appear to be tracking at all, struggling to get away.

"Hey!" The sharpness of his voice is necessary to get Mac's attention, but Thomas winces anyway at the flinch. He's exfil. His job is to get these people safely home not hurt them. Sometimes, though, it's the only way to help. "Mac, it's me. You know me. Look at my face, c'mon. What's my name? You always remember my name."

It was the first rule Thomas had been taught that wasn't in the exfil handbook - don't expect the agents to remember your name. Mac had broken that immediately, not only asking for his name on Thomas' first exfil run on him and Jack, but remembering it at their next meeting, and every meeting since. True to form, it doesn't take Mac long, squinting at him in the near-dark, to piece things together and finally recognize the person in front of him.

"Thomas?"

"Yeah, man, yeah." Thomas grins, glad to see him return to coherency. He releases Mac's wrists, patting him on the shoulder and stepping back, giving him some space. "That's it, you got it in one. Me and the rest of Sierra are here to get you two home. Speaking of, where's Jack? We need to get a move on."

All of the gladness is gone as Mac's face twists immediately back into the overwhelming panic that had kept him from recognizing Thomas to begin with. His eyes have gone right past Thomas' head to the wall of rubble he'd been leaning next to before, and Thomas doesn't know if it's the nearly nonexistent lighting or if a tremor really does run through Mac's pursed lips before he answers.

"I can't hear- He was breathing, and I could hear him, but now I can't."

Mac is staring at the downed side of the cave.

"I can't hear him breathing."

He'd been tapping on the wall with the end of what appears to have been, forgotten on the floor next to Thomas' flashlight, his Swiss Army Knife. Odd, off-beat patterns. Morse code. _I can't hear him breathing._

 _Oh_ , Thomas thinks, whipping around to stare at the rocks himself. _Oh, god_.

Behind him, Mac keeps talking, voice picking up speed as he explains.

"One minute he was looking for a way up and out, I was watching the hall, and then the room started shaking and part of the ceiling just came down. I tried to get him to answer, but…" He shakes his head. "I know he's not buried because I could hear him breathing at first, when I was really quiet, but he could have a head injury, or his chest could be crushed, or something sharp hit an artery and he's bled out while I've just been- I can't hear Jack breathing any more." His voice cracks on that word, the first time he's said his partner's name, and even more than Jack's absence, somewhere behind that ominous wall of rock, it's Mac's panic that scares Thomas.

"Okay," he says slowly. He needs Mac's brain if they're going to get Jack out of this alive, and so first things first, he needs Mac to calm down. "Why don't we both get real quiet, and you let me have a listen, okay? I've got great hearing, why do you think they hired me?" He makes the joke, a running gag between Mac and Jack and himself, _why do you think they hired me,_ rather than pointing out that maybe the reason Mac can't hear him any more is because he's having what appears to be a panic attack.

Luckily, Mac complies without arguing. Thomas picks the Swiss Army Knife and the flashlight up off the ground, handing the former to Mac before crouching down beside where he'd seen Mac standing. Presumably, that's where he'd have been able to hear most clearly before. With his head so close to the rubble his ear is almost brushing it, ignoring the awkward strain of kneeling like this wearing all his equipment, Thomas focuses on quieting as much as possible, tuning out the rest of the world and listening.

Seconds tick by, empty and glacial. He's just about to give up, wondering if it had been Mac's own breathing he'd been hearing, in his mind's desperate desire for proof of Jack's continued life, when he hears it. Faint and muffled, through the rocks, comes the sound of breathing. It's uneven and slow, but it's breathing nonetheless, made louder by the harsh labored sound of an injured body fighting for air. Jack is alive. At least for now, he's alive.

Looking up, Thomas meets Mac's wide eyes, and nods.

"He's alive, I can hear him," he says. Something in Mac deflates, and he slumps back against the side of the cave, hand grasping the Swiss Army Knife coming up over his face like he's forgotten he's holding it. "And you and me, we're gonna get him out. So I need you to focus, okay? I need you to come over here and talk to him, and not stop talking to him until he answers."

When Mac's hand lowers, the dim offcast glow from Thomas' Maglite shows the frown that's overtaken his brow, and he's already shaking his head when he speaks. At least he sounds more put-together now, the panic-induced haze of Jack's potential death fading and leaving behind the competence and skill he's known for.

"I need to be helping you figure out how to get him out," Mac says. "I tried before you got here, there doesn't seem to be a way to get through without the whole thing destabilizing. One of the beams came down with that part of the ceiling and a bit of the wall. We need to work together."

"One of us has to keep trying to get through to Jack," pushes Thomas, swinging the flashlight beam over to the rubble to punctuate his point. "When he wakes up, _when_ , he's probably going to be confused and in some serious pain. He's not gonna recognize my voice, not what with all this." Another swing of the flashlight, sweeping the entirety of the small room. "You, though. He'd know you in a second. He'd know you no matter what."

It's clear Mac is conflicted, warring instincts plain on his face. Thomas throws one last thing on the pile in an attempt to convince him.

"This isn't my first cave in, Mac," he says simply. "I've done this before. I know what to do. What to look for. I'll let you know when I need you, but right now, Jack needs you more."

That seems to do it, and Mac nods. He walks over and takes Thomas' place, sitting down on the ground with pocket knife twiddling around in restless fingers. As Thomas begins to walk the perimeter of the room, investigating the full scope of what happened to the structure when Jack was trapped, he hears Mac begin to talk behind him. He's mostly not listening, focusing on exploring every inch of the rockfall, but his own name catches his attention, and he pauses for a second.

"-remember Thomas, right? Sierra November's your favorite exfil team, I know they are, they're faster than Echo Romeo and friendlier than Whiskey Juliet. Didn't Lucia Sosa run our first extraction? I think I remember her being there. The rest of them weren't, but I think Lucia was there, she called you cowboy until she learned your name." There's a quiet sound that's mostly a chuckle, only slightly reminiscent of a choke. "Then they hired Vincent, and you told him he looked like he should be teaching history, not flying helicopters. Remember, Jack? At least he had a sense of humor about it."

Running his fingers lightly over a seam between the one support beam still upright and the solid rock behind it, Thomas almost laughs. It's a fair description, especially given Vincent's propensity towards turtleneck sweaters, and how he always looks exhausted enough to have been up all night grading papers. As he prods carefully at the pillar, determining it to be still anchored strongly to the wall, Thomas listens with half an ear to Mac's voice, now talking about the addition of Meredith. Mac's anecdotes about Sierra November circle back to Thomas then, some of the more memorable experiences they've had with him.

Thomas finds himself reminiscing a little as well, running the flashlight over the jagged parts of the cave that had fallen in, leaving the impression of large, uneven scoops taken out of the ceiling. He doesn't know what he's going to do if they can't get Jack out. Maybe the best plan would be to leave, circle around to the rest of Thomas' team, and come back as a group. Work together to get to him. But as soon as the thought occurs, Thomas dismisses it out of hand.

Over the course of more than a year, becoming the go-to team to send in to the kind of particularly sticky situations Mac and Jack tended to find themselves in, Sierra November has spent quite a bit of time with them. Thomas, while Vincent and Lucia were the ones often driving or flying their way out of the area, often ended up sitting in the back of various methods of transport with Mac and Jack, talking to them, observing them. He's seen Mac grinning and laughing on an adrenaline high of a tough job well done, screaming and bleeding profusely with a bullet in his thigh, half-asleep against Jack's shoulder and too exhausted to care who witnesses his vulnerability.

If Thomas knows anything at all about Mac, he knows there's not a chance in hell of getting him to leave Jack behind alone. Not when Jack's completely unresponsive, and they have no idea how long it'd take them to find him again along with the rest of Thomas' team. And Thomas himself isn't about to leave either. His duty of responsibility is to these agents, and what's more, they're his friends. He's not going to leave them open and unprotected like this, not when he knows Mac doesn't carry a gun and the arms dealers could be down here somewhere, minutes from rounding the corner and opening fire.

In the middle of Thomas' musing, jolting him up out of deep thought, Mac's voice changes. He stops what he's doing and looks over, flashlight beam swinging with him to catch sight of Mac's expression, which has gone wide and hopeful.

"Jack?" he says again, voice slightly louder. "Jack, it's me. Can you hear me?"

A faint, muffled cough, and then, finally, a voice, a one word inquiry that is Thomas' immediate guess as to what Jack's first question would be, every time.

"Mac?"

A low, relieved laugh escapes Mac's throat, and Thomas' face breaks into a wide smile.

"Yeah, Jack," Mac confirms, putting one slightly shaking hand over his face.

"Y'kay?" It's a jumbled set of words, but the meaning is clear, and Thomas shakes his head.

 _You okay?_

This guy.

The hand comes down, and Thomas can see by the light of the flashlight that Mac's blue eyes are brighter than normal, slightly reddened. "I'm _fine_ ," he says, and his voice is thick, a little uneven. "I'm here with Thomas King, from Sierra November, I'm fine."

"Tom?" The word is hazy and weak, but it's a good sign.

"Yeah, Jack, I'm here too. How're you doing in there?"

Before Jack can answer, an ominous sound interrupts him. It's a sound Thomas has heard before, and recently, a deep jolting rumble. The walls are trembling and he can feel the floor beneath him shaking, heralding the arrival of what appears to be at the least the third cave-in since Mac and Jack entered the system. There's just enough time for Thomas to grab onto Mac's sleeve, yanking him over to the wall and pulling the kid's head to his chest, curling over him to protect as much of him as possible, when the rocks start coming down.

* * *

It's over quickly, without major injury dealt to either Thomas or Mac, as far as Thomas can see peering over dusty blond hair at the body he's attempted to shield with his own. No new blood, only a few smears from before visible on his blue shirt, and Thomas breathes a sigh of relief. Straightening up and releasing Mac from his grip, he pushes the field agent over towards where they'd last heard Jack's voice, instructing him, "You check on him, get him talking, I'll get a read on what's going on."

Mac doesn't need to be told twice, instantly crouching down and calling his partner's name. Thomas is relieved to hear Jack answer almost immediately, then focuses on his own task. The new rockfall was on the other side of them than the original one, the one that had walled Jack off into his end of the room. It appears to merely be a partial one, as well, with a sizable opening between the rubble and the ceiling, certainly big enough for a person to climb through.

"Hey, Thomas, can you bring the flashlight over here?" Mac's voice calls from behind him.

"What's going on?" he asks, crouching down and offering the light. Mac takes it, angling the flashlight at the rockpile behind which Jack lays. Sure enough, the beam doesn't just hit stone this time, instead finding a gap and shining through, past it.

"That you?"

"Yeah, Jack, that's us, you can see the light? Can you get any closer to it?"

Following Thomas' instructions, after a few tense moments, a dusty, trembling hand comes into view, waving through the flashlight beam on the other side of the cave.

"Jack, can you-"

The aftershock cuts Mac off this time just like the main event had the time before, but something is different. This time, Thomas can hear the origin point, and it isn't localized on them. There was a distant boom, somewhere far off down the cave system, causing the room they're in to shift and pitch again. The walls and the ceiling stay put, but suddenly, Thomas knows what's going on.

"They're here," he says, staring out into the halls past the half-blocked entrance to their offshoot room. "They're far away, we barely heard that, but the cave-ins, the aftershocks, it's them. My team wouldn't be that careless. Whoever you were chasing, they're here. We've just got to hope that Lucia, Vince, and Mer get here first. They know what they're looking for, approximately where I left, so they should find us before…"

When he realizes that nobody's paying attention, never mind responding to what he's saying, Thomas stops, turning around with a faint edge of annoyance. The annoyance vanishes, though, when he sees what's happening. Mac looks dazed, and he's staring, fixed, at the gap where they'd previously seen Jack's hand. Previously, because the hand is gone now, fallen out of sight. As Thomas watches, something in Mac's face changes, and his knees go out. He falls back against the wall nearest the opening, hands covering his face for the umpteenth time, like he's been trying to keep everything he's feeling hidden away. Thomas kneels next to him and takes the flashlight, pointing it at the gap.

"He's alive," Mac says, voice barely more than a whisper and blocked partially by his own hands. "I can hear him. He's breathing, I can hear him."

If he listens hard, Thomas can hear it too, labored and congested sounding, but there. He's not speaking though, and Mac's shoulders are jerking up and down with his own erratic breaths. All there is they can do at this point is wait it out, hope Thomas' team gets there in time, but if they panic now, well...

"Did I ever tell you how I got recruited?" Thomas blurts out without much thought. All he knows is Jack is fading, Mac is panicking, and someone needs to say _something_. "Hey. Jack. C'mon. I know you like a good story."

There's a moment of fractured quiet, striated by the ragged edges of Mac's own breaths, and something shifting in the rocks. Thomas looks from the off-shape opening in the rubble where he can't quite make out enough to know if Jack is still conscious, over to Mac, who is crumpled with his back against the rockpile, face still completely obscured by dust-coated, bloody-knuckled hands. They're falling apart, and if they want to make it out of here in anything resembling one piece, they can't.

" _Jack_ , " Thomas says louder, voice sharp and hard and reminding himself of Lucia. "I need you to answer me, now. It's rude to ignore people when they're trying to tell you a story."

Thomas is about to speak again when a rough voice emerges from the indistinct features of the dark.

"Well I'm dead if..." The pause is just long enough that it makes Thomas' heart lurch into his throat, and he can see a look edging on devastated that's come across Mac's face where it's lifted from his hands. Then, after an audible inhale, broken and harsh, Jack continues. "If my momma finds out I've been… Been rude to somebody try- tryin' to help me."

"Good." Relief feels cold, shooting like frost leaves down Thomas' arms. "Good. Mac, you with us? I'm only telling this story once, okay?"

Waiting for Mac to answer is almost as stressful as waiting for Jack to respond had been. Thomas keeps the flashlight directed towards the gap in the rubble, monitoring Jack's condition as best he can, but the cast-off glow is enough to outline Mac's slumped form, and he watches out the corner of his eye as Mac's shoulders rise and fall a few times.

"Yeah," he says eventually. The word is damp and congested, and Thomas hears him clear his throat, saying again, more clearly, "Yeah. How'd it happen?"

"So," Thomas begins, satisfied that Jack is still conscious and Mac has returned to coherency, "I grew up in California. I was born in Visalia, and my dad and I would go camping and hiking in the national parks all the time. We were there constantly. Got so that I was better at getting around those woods than the city I lived in." He pauses here deliberately, letting long seconds slip by to the backdrop of dripping water somewhere on Jack's side of the cave, until the gravel-rough voice sounds again.

"And _that_ got you hired at DXS?"

The fact that Jack has enough energy to sound skeptical is something Thomas finds reassuring, and he grins a little. He settles his shoulder against the solid stretch of stone wall next to him and sweeps his eyes around the narrow space he and Mac are walled into, absently scanning for any sign the rocks are further shifting as he keeps talking.

"I'm getting there, okay? Slow your roll. I basically grew up in those parks, so when I turned eighteen, I went pro. I joined a SAR team. Ended up spending eight years running calls with them, wilderness mostly, before I got tapped by DXS. Jack, you wanna elaborate for your boy here, tell him what SAR stands for?" When he asks the question, Thomas sees Mac frown.

"I know-" he starts, and Thomas cuts him off with a sharp headshake, waving his hand near his neck in the universal sign for 'zip it'. Mac squints, and Thomas jerks his chin to the side, indicating Jack on the other side of the wall.

 _Come on, kid,_ Thomas thinks. _Pick up what I'm putting down._

Abruptly, Mac's eyes go wide, and the corner of his mouth pulls up into a slight smile. He turns to the side a little, and says, "Yeah, Jack, what's SAR? I can't remember."

"Search and- Search and Rescue," comes the answer, a little confused. Jack's voice is stronger, though, so Thomas will take it. "That how DXS gets their exfil? Local SAR teams?"

"Not exactly," Thomas tells him, then pauses again, letting the silence stretch out. Mac's definitely onto his plan by now, and keeps quiet as well. The more they can keep Jack talking, keep him engaged, the better.

"Well? How then?"

"I was on a camping trip alone, I was deep in the forest - used to freak my friends out when I did that. I'd drop off the face of the Earth for days, no radio contact. They knew where I was, knew I knew what I was doing, but they still worried. You get that, right Jack? Word on the street is you know a thing or two about friends with worrying habits." With a side glance at Mac, Thomas pulls an exaggerated conspiratorial expression, complete with overacted wink, which is enough to earn him a faint snort of laughter.

From the other side of the rocks, Jack answers after a moment, saying, "You kidding?" Another pause, an audibly drawn breath, and Thomas sees the smile evaporate off Mac's face at the pained sound of it. "I'm the _expert_ in that."

"See, I figured. Anyways, so I'm on one of my camping trips deep in the woods, completely alone, not on a SAR run or anything, and I ran into someone in serious trouble. Dressed in full tac gear, shot in two places, just… _found her_ while I was hiking. Before I know what's going on, there are people shooting at us. Anybody want to have a guess who my new mystery friend was?"

"You did- you did _not_ ," Jack manages through what sounds like gritted teeth, " _accidentally_ exfil a D- DXS agent on a _camping trip._ "

Thomas can't help the laugh that bubbles up in his chest. "I guess you could call it that, yeah. She was DXS, and to be honest, they never actually told me what she was doing there to begin with. Anyway, I got both of us out and to the nearest Ranger's station. Next day, I get called into DXS, no idea who they were or what I was doing there. Week after that, they called me again. Walked in for what I thought was a follow-up, walked out with a job offer. Guess they'd spent that week doing background checks and calling around my SAR team. So." He shrugs, holding his hands out, the flashlight beam moving with them. "Here I am."

"That's insane, man, how-" Whatever Jack had been going to say, it's cut abruptly off by a harsh cough that has both Thomas and Mac bolting to attention.

The flashlight is trained solidly on the gap through which they'd been able to catch glimpses of him, and they wait in tense silence for the coughing to abate. When it does, strained breathing is all that's left in its wake.

"Jack?" Mac says after a few moments. "Jack!"

A low groan sounds, followed by the attempt at what Thomas assumes was going to be the word 'yeah', petering out before Jack makes it through more than a letter.

"He's out of time. We have to do something." Mac's rounded on Thomas now. It's a sharper kind of panic in his eyes than Thomas had seen when he'd first arrived, when there'd been that lingering question of if Jack were already dead. The question of Jack maybe being dead was a far different one than the reality of Jack actively dying, and Mac's urgency is contagious.

Thomas bought them as much time as he could with his story, calming them both down and keeping Jack talking until help arrived. But help hadn't arrived. Whatever is going on up there with the rest of Sierra November, they aren't going to get there in time. Not without interference, without help.

Something Mac said earlier occurs to Thomas out of nowhere, _One minute he was looking for a way up and out,_ and just like that, he has an idea.

"Okay," Thomas mutters, then turns to Mac, speaking louder. "Okay. Here's what we're gonna do." Fishing his useless walkie talkie out of its holster on his vest, Thomas hands it to Mac, asking, "Is there something you can do to this that'll make it just keep going off, like continuously bounce interference off the signal?"

"Yeah, but there isn't a signal down here or we could just use it."

"I'm working on it, I just need to know if you can get it to do that with what's in here." As he speaks, Thomas is removing his vest, handing it and the larger flashlight to Mac. "Let me worry about the signal."

"Got it," Mac agrees without any further argument, clicking the more heavy-duty light on and beginning to take pieces of the vest kit apart.

Confident that he knows what he's doing and a little disappointed he won't get to watch, Thomas leaves him to it and crouches down next to the opening through which they'd been talking to Jack.

"Jack, man, you there?" A pause, silence broken only by heavy breathing. "Jack! We need you, come on." As predicted, that does it, Jack's hand coming once more into view, waving through the beam of Thomas' light. "Mac said you were over there looking for a way up, before the rocks fell. Did you find anything?"

"Yeah." The word is clipped and pained, and Thomas winces, knowing that what he's about to ask of Jack is going to hurt like hell. "Too small."

"Right. Can you still see it?"

"Yeah. It's- It's bigger, but-" Another coughing spell, though shorter and less intense than the last one.

"That's fine," Thomas interrupts. "We aren't gonna try and send you up through it, we just need to get a walkie talkie through. Two part question: Could we get a walkie through it, and are you capable of tossing it with that kind of accuracy?"

This time, he has a hunch the pause is because Jack is thinking hard on it, not incapable of speaking, which is both reassuring and nerve-wracking. After a while, the answer comes in the affirmative, and Thomas nods.

"Okay. Okay, good. Mac, how're we coming?"

A burst of static answers him, and Thomas is finally feeling like things might be okay, they may just get out of here in one piece. The feeling increases when Jack, despite all odds and internal injuries, manages on the second try to toss the walkie up and out of the cave system, landing presumably on the grass outside. Even from his place a rockslide and half a room away, Thomas can still hear the static fizzing outside.

"And they'll know how to find us with that?"

Given the circumstances, Thomas figures Mac's uneasy doubt is understandable.

"Oh yeah," he says immediately, hoping the conviction in his voice is enough to put Mac's anxiety at ease. "They'll find us."

* * *

It's Meredith's voice they hear first, cutting in front of whoever else had been about to speak to demand, "What the _hell_ , Tom?"

"Meredith?" That voice is Jack's, rough and strained as he calls up towards the ceiling.

"Jack?" Now it's Lucia, confused but masking it well with the authoritative clip to her tone. "Is Thomas with you?"

Crouching down and getting his head as close to the gap in the rocks as he can, Thomas raises his voice near to a shout and calls, "Lucia, it's Thomas. I'm stuck on the other side of a rockslide with MacGyver, Jack's hurt bad and we can't get to him. Gun runners are down here, getting closer. Advise?"

While waiting for Lucia to presumably confer with Vincent and Meredith, Thomas turns to look at Mac. He's back to staring at the barrier between him and Jack, tapping with the Swiss Army Knife again. Thomas closes his eyes for a moment and concentrates, listening to the series of sounds until he finds the pattern, the letters rapidly repeating themselves.

 _IMHEREHANGON._

 _I'm here. Hang on_.

Thomas wonders if Mac even knows he's doing it.

Hearing his team lead's voice call once more down through the hole in the ceiling, Thomas turns back, angling his head to hear more clearly.

"Say again?" he yells, cringing and feeling the back of his neck prickle at the volume of it. There's no way of telling how close the arms dealers have gotten to them by now, whether they can hear him.

"We can open it up from here," he makes out, "pulley Jack up and out. Once we've got him, I'll take Meredith and come down for you, Vincent'll stay with him. Just sent him for his kit."

"Sounds…" Jack's voice is quiet enough, spent enough that Thomas would bet Lucia can't even hear him. "Sounds good…"

"Jack says it sounds good," Thomas relays. There's something very off putting about passing on a message for somebody who is actually closer to the person you're speaking to. He then looks over to Mac once more, asking, "You get all that?"

Mac nods tightly, hand white-knuckled around his multitool. The morse code has silenced, and Thomas knows this is a very special kind of hell for him.

"Hey," he says gently, waiting until Mac meets his eyes to keep talking. "Why don't you come over here, talk to Jack, keep him company until they're ready to get him out of there, huh?" Giving him something to do, something actionable to focus on, seems to Thomas like the best bet to keep him from losing his mind just sitting here in the dark, waiting. "I'll keep watch down the hall."

"Yeah, okay," Mac agrees, sliding over to take Thomas' place.

When the next cave-in sounds, far down the hall but closer than the last, Thomas knows they don't have that long. The men Mac and Jack were sent after are coming, and a hunch Thomas had earlier is all but confirmed. These cave-ins, the falling pillars and dislodged rocks sending room after room down in rubble, growing ever closer, they're not by accident. Thomas knows they have to do something, _now_ , and it's something Mac is not going to like. At all.

"Do-" Thomas cuts himself off less than two words into asking Mac, _Do you trust me?_ , because he knows that's not a fair question to ask.

Thomas and Mac aren't close, not like Thomas is with the rest of Sierra November, but he'd like to think he's gotten to know the guy pretty well by now. At least well enough to know that despite his persistent smile and polite respect whenever exfil shows up to get him and Jack, DXS' wunderkind has far more thunderclouds inside his impressive mind than his sunshine-bright exterior betrays. _Do you trust me?_ Thomas knows what the answer would be, and what's more, he has a pretty good hunch that answer would be completely justified.

"I need you to trust me," he says instead, and doesn't miss the reflexive twitch in Mac's dimly illuminated face. "I know it's not that easy, I _know_ it's a big ask, but just for _right now,_ I need you to trust me. They're coming, they're getting closer, and they're bringing this whole place down with them. My team, they'll get Jack out, but you, I need you to come with me and we need to leave _now_."

For a long moment, a moment Thomas can scarcely afford to give him, Mac just stands there and stares. His lips are pursed hard together, and Thomas is worried he might hurt himself with how tensely his hand is clenched around the Swiss Army Knife.

"Jack is going to be fine, they'll get him, but you and me, we will _not_ be fine, unless you can find it in yourself to trust me when I tell you we need to go. They won't see him if they come around this corner. _We_ can hardly tell he's here. Us, they'll see immediately, and if they see you, they'll just start shooting. I would not even begin to consider suggesting this if I didn't believe without a moment's hesitation that they'll get him out, that he'll be okay. And I know for a fact, that if I let anything happen to you, he is _not_ going to be okay, so please. Just for right now, trust me."

Whether it's because of how well Thomas has argued his point, or because of more than a year's experience together, Mac agrees. He accepts Thomas' help making the precarious climb up and through the opening between the second rockslide and the ceiling, looking apprehensively back over his shoulder when they reach the other side.

"They've got him. That's their job. Let me do mine, hey?" Thomas speaks in a whisper, mindful of the way sound carries in the caves. He looks around, eyes needing time adjust to the dark. When they reached the ground, he'd clicked his flashlight off, relieved to see none of the light from the continued rescue efforts on Jack is making it through.

Out again come the infrared goggles. The plan is for he and Mac to make their way in complete darkness until they reach the nearest outlet up to the surface, which he's memorized from the map now tucked back into his pocket. Because there's only one pair of goggles between the two of them, Mac's fingers are latched onto the back of his vest, twisted through the straps. It's the kind of thing acting troupes use as trust exercises, and it's not lost on Thomas.

He'd asked Mac to trust him. Just for now, just for right now, trust him. Mac hadn't answered verbally, but he's holding, blinded, onto the back of Thomas' vest, following him unquestioningly through the dark, and that's more of an answer than anything involving words could've been.

Maybe this acute awareness is part of the thought process that motivates Thomas' actions when, not twenty feet from the faint light given off by the tunnel to the surface, two flashlight beams sweep around the corner too close for them to hide in time. Thomas stops dead in his tracks and then swiftly backpedals, knocking Mac bodily backwards until he's shoved into the small alcove Thomas had barely noted as they walked past it, just large enough for a person to fit. He's counting on the alcove, the darkness, and his own height to successfully block Mac from view - it's a long shot, standing at six-foot-two himself and knowing Mac can't clear six feet, but maybe, just maybe it'll work.

Whatever language the two men, guns trained square on Thomas' chest, are shouting in, he doesn't speak it. That doesn't mean, however, that he doesn't understand the name that keeps coming up, or the upward cant to their speech indicating questions. 'MacGyver'. They're looking for Mac, and Thomas is nowhere near going to give him to them. He's halfway through telling them he doesn't understand them, hoping against hope they'll ignore the gear and vest and presume him a lost hiker, when the gun goes off.

Guns, plural, maybe six shots total, deafeningly loud and endlessly echoing in the confines of the tunnels. Behind Thomas, Mac cries out, while in front of him, the two arms dealers drop where they stand, leaving a clear view to Lucia and Meredith, silhouetted by the light from the exit.

"Tom," Meredith says, but Thomas ignores her, instead stepping away and whirling to face Mac, almost losing his balance in the process. He feels dizzy but ignores that too, grabbing at his vest until he finds his flashlight, snapping it on.

"Are you _fucking_ kidding me?" he snaps, upon seeing the blood on Mac's shirt, the wound in his side. "How did they _possibly_ -"

"Tom." Meredith's voice is louder this time, more urgent. Mac is frowning at him too, hand coming up to press at his side at the same time as he looks like he's about to speak.

"You're hit? How did they- how-" Air is suddenly hard to draw in, and Thomas frowns, swallowing. There's an odd taste in his mouth. He shakes his head, trying to clear the dizziness that's just growing stronger.

" _Tommy_ ," yells Meredith, and he finally turns, hands out to ask what she wants, when it hits him. The pain.

"Oh," he gasps, finally looking down at his own chest, at the red soaking through the white thread of the stitched KING , the patch of heaving, bloodied skin visible through torn fabric above his left hip. It's like his mind's gone blank, overtaken by the abrupt awakening of every nerve ending surrounding the two paths torn through his torso. " _Oh_."

Behind him, Mac says something, but Thomas doesn't hear it any more than he feels the stone under his head when he hits the ground.

* * *

The world returns to him in fleeting pieces. It comes in flashes of artificial, impersonal light and the smell of blood and antiseptic. It comes in Meredith's voice next to his head as fingers stroke over his hair, an indistinct, shapeless murmur. It comes in the outline of Vincent in the doorway, moments later a hand laid over his chest, a thumb stroking over the bit of the hospital gown covering his collarbone. It comes in the weight of a person sitting beside his hip on the bed, cracking open his eyes to see Lucia, eyes closed and a rosary in her hand. Praying. Lucia, quietly Catholic with a rosary kept in the inside pocket of her favorite jacket, who Thomas has only ever seen pray once, the day her daughter was in a serious accident.

They're all there when he wakes and stays awake, Meredith passed out on a cot a nurse had rolled in some time the second night, Vincent leaning against the door jam, and Lucia pacing alongside his bed. Lucia answers every question he asks, explaining how the bullet that pierced his side managed to make it through him to graze Mac behind him. She tells him that Jack pulled through surgery with flying colors, expected to be up and walking by the end of the day, and that Mac's injuries were mostly superficial.

"So everyone's okay."

"Yeah," she agrees, though the lines around her mouth and eyes are too grim for the positive response. "Everyone's going to be just fine. Even you, not for lack of trying."

"Sorry," he breathes, closing his eyes and leaning back against the pillow behind him. "Sorry."

* * *

Another night passes before Thomas really starts to get antsy, glancing frequently at the door and unable to keep still, picking at the edge of his own thumbnail. The drugs they have him on have been decreased, on his request. They make him foggy, leave him unable to track what's going on or stay awake for too long, but now that he's in control of himself again, it's all he can do to stop himself from getting out of bed and hunting down the object of his thoughts himself. It's not long before his sentry of the moment - they haven't left him alone once - notices.

"You want to see them, don't you. MacGyver and Dalton." Vincent's voice is low and just barely too soft to be called accusatory. His tall, broad form is folded into a chair too small for him with the exhausted, careless crumple of laundry dropped on a floor.

"Can't get it in my head they're okay," admits Thomas, staring down at his hands, folded over the stiff blanket he only barely remembers Meredith tucking around him. "Mac and Jack. I know we're supposed to be able to walk away, let it go when they get home but…"

"But that's bullshit and we all know it," is how Vincent finishes for him, an anomalously blunt statement from a man Thomas has heard swear fewer times than he could count on two hands. "Rule one, agents won't remember your name, rule two, don't get attached. I've heard it, we've all heard it, we all know it's completely futile. We're people, Tom. Compartmentalization is a skill, but coldness is a weakness."

"So you'll take me over there?"

"If I didn't," Vincent sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, "you'd go yourself."

It's a fair point, Thomas has to concede, and he tries not to feel too guilty at how tired Sierra November's second looks, heaving himself up and leaving the room to get a nurse. The transfer from the bed to the wheelchair is not a pleasant one, but Thomas grits his teeth through it, counting his lucky stars they're letting him do this. It's a short trip down the hall to the room they're keeping Jack in.

"Here you go," Vincent says quietly, nudging the wheel-stop down with his foot and parking the chair just inside the doorway. "I'll be back to get you in ten, no arguments."

"None will be given." The assurance doesn't seem to make Vincent feel much better about having moved him at all in his current condition. His hand hovers over Thomas' shoulder, falling to squeeze once, hard, then stepping out.

Jack is awake when Thomas' eyes find him, and he isn't alone. He looks comfortable and at-ease, though there's the faint hazy look in his eyes indicate there's a moderately serious drug cocktail in the IV hanging near his head, despite the fact that hospital beds are not designed with two people in mind, and his is a bit crowded at the moment. Mac is there too, on his side along the edge of Jack's bed closest to the door. His head is resting over his partner's chest, and he's out cold, Jack's arm around him making sure he doesn't fall backwards onto the floor.

"Hey," Jack greets Thomas with a faint grin, like this is the most normal thing in the world. Then again, in their line of work, normal is… relative, to put it mildly. Jack indicates the sleeping blond with the hand curled around his shoulder, waving a bit, lazily, before resettling. "Only way either of us were gonna get any rest."

"Makes sense," Thomas agrees.

"Pretty sure there's a part of him that's still down there in that cave, tryin' to hear me breathing, y'know?" As he speaks, Jack's thumb moves absently over Mac's upper arm.

Something in Thomas' chest squeezes painfully, and he hopes it's induced by the reminder of how frantic Mac had been when Thomas found him, frantic and scared to death at not being able to hear Jack breathing through the fallen rock wall. Better that than an indication he's torn one of the stitches holding his insides together.

"Yeah," he agrees quietly. "I know."

"Hey, Tom," Jack says, abruptly switching gears. His voice sounds different, a hair louder and a fraction more serious. Gone is the quiet affection that underlays the way he talks about Mac, though there's still something of great emotional significance in what he's about to say, if the audible tension of his throat is any indication. "I wanted to say thank you."

"Thank me? For what?" A moment after he asks the question, Thomas feels ridiculous. "Oh. Right. Sorry. I'm on…" The specific medications escape him, and he swishes a hand absently. "Stuff. Cause of the…"

"Cause of the bullets you took for my boy, here, I figure." Despite the 'stuff' Jack himself is on, likely stronger than what they'd given Thomas, by the nature and extent of his injuries, his gaze is piercing and expression calmly serious. Thomas looks away, uncomfortable with the attention.

"Wasn't me they wanted dead," he mutters. "I had time to stall, he didn't. They shot me 'cause they were surprised, if they'd seen him they'd have executed both of us on the spot, and I couldn't… Anyway."

"I don't just mean that."

Despite his insistence, Jack's fingers twitch a little on Mac's shoulder, moving without conscious thought towards the long, deep graze wound now hiding under Mac's shirt. Come to think of it, that can't be a comfortable position to lay in with that kind of injury. Just speaks, Thomas figures soberingly, to exactly how much of that fear he'd seen when he'd first found Mac was still clinging to him, driving him to seek proof of Jack's wellbeing, to hear his heartbeat and track his continued breathing. As if he can sense Thomas' line of thought, Mac twitches a little, fingers digging slightly into the blanket covering Jack's torso.

"I mean all the rest of it, too." Apparently, Jack isn't going to just let it rest, speaking again as soon as Mac's settled back into deep sleep.

"The rest of it," repeats Thomas.

"I mean finding us down there after you got separated from the rest of Sierra. I mean keeping me awake and him calm, keeping your head. Making him leave - not a lot of people could'a done that, and they told me what went down. You'd both be dead if you hadn't."

If Thomas had been embarrassed before, he was doubly so now. There's an intensity to the sincerity in Jack's voice that makes the back of Thomas' neck burn. He rubs at it, winces when the movement pulls at his own wounds, all but forgotten in a haze of pain meds and unnecessary praise.

"Just doing my job, Jack." His voice is soft, and he's avoiding Jack's eyes, watching Mac instead. Their conversation hasn't woken him - he's barely stirred since Thomas got there, and he's gotta wonder how long Mac had been awake for, when that mission ended.

"Yeah. Y'know, it's funny. Never used to like the idea of exfil. Figure, we got us in, we can get us out, why add more to the equation. But folks like you… I get it now, man. No one I'd rather know is comin' for me at the end of a bad mission. So, thanks, Tom. For all of it."

Thomas' throat feels tight and his eyes hot, and he nods, not trusting himself to speak just yet. He knows Vincent will be coming back to get him soon, and Thomas can't help but hope it'll be fast, if only to give him some distance from this conversation. It's not the first time he's been thanked by an agent after a successful extraction, of course, but something about this is different. More significant.

"If there's ever anything you need, I mean it, one call, and we'll be there. That's a promise."

Of course, Thomas has no real intention of taking them up on it. He doesn't believe much in owing people, in debts or favors. It does give him an idea, though, one that could bring some levity back to a heavy, dark day.

"Actually," he says slowly, looking over at Jack and feeling the beginnings of a smile pulling at the edge of his mouth. "There's something I've been meaning to ask Mac if he'd help us with, if you think he'd be up for it. So, there's this coffee pot, right, in the exfil kitchen…"


End file.
